For those of you not following the abusive interchange at the end of day 4’s post, it has been a warm, humid night here, and I awoke in joy to the pitter patter of rain on the roof. Since then, it has dried up, but still very gloomy. There are still a couple of thunderstorms forecast, clearing by this afternoon, but often in Perth it looks like this for a day or two, and we never get a drop of rain. If any comes, I would say it will probably be brief. Pity, because we desperately need the rain . . . for the gardens, of course!

Will, at least there is a 5th day!

Awww, that’s rotten for Jones. Well, been nice knowing you guys . . .

At least Freddie had a bit of a blast. Is Monty up for the double ton?

“Awww, that’s rotten for Jones” No Jones is rotten!

Hopefully that’s the last time we’ll ever have to suffer Jones’ iron gloves and limp batting performances. Did Alec Stewart bring his pads? Why oh why is Peterson batting so far down the order? There’s going to be blood in the long room after this tour…

Be plenty of cheap tickets floating around for Sydney and Melbourne.

oh bugger!

Guess i found the cure.

England’s performances on this tour have been disgraceful and have been disrespectful for the thousands of paying fans, fans at home and to the Australian team…

When Australia lost the Ashes last year at least they didn’t fold, they fought hard and never lost hope of winning that series…

And what now?? Let the witch hunt begin… Instead of the players taking responsibility “they” will go after Fletcher for some bad choices. To be honest he should of put the pads on himself he would’ve done a better job than Mr. “playing beach cricket and am i nice guy” Giles and “Are my feet stuck in concrete?” Flintoff.

Bow your heads in shame you sorry XI. No spirit. No heart. No Fight.

This tour disgracful? they’ve been disgracful since the last ashes series so you couldnt have expected more and the paying fans might have guessed! suck shit england u suck monkey balls! haha beat australia twice in arrow!? you were all dreaming

England Management arn’t out there in the middle…

Face it…

England Choked.

Please don’t go down the “We played bad for 2 sessions” crap…

Yes England played “quite well”, but that’s not good enough buddy… They seemed like they didn’t give a crap sometimes… Like they were here for a holiday.. All talk, no ticker…

Straight up posers

How could you ever possibly have thought it would be otherwise? So many on this site wanted to disparage this Australian side in comparison to the 1999 side. What a ridiculous notion! That team were an hour away from drawing 2-2 with an England side that was ranked 7 in the world, and was about to slip to number 8 after a home loss to New Zealand. (The Wisden rankings had England at 9 below Zimbabwe, but they can’t be taken seriously). This side has belted an England side that is genuinely number 2 in the world. They will probably slip now if the hysterical witch-hunters get their way, but it hasn’t been a bad side nonetheless. So tell us guys, how does this Australian side compare to 1999 now? You’ve got to look at results, not your own inadequate notions of who is good and who isn’t, but even if you do look at individuals in the batting line-up: Blewett, Slater, Elliott, and Healy on his last legs versus Hayden, Ponting, Hussey and Gilchrist? GIVE ME A BREAK!

Just goes to show Will. We weren’t pretending all of these years. We really can’t play cricket.
Lets be honest, Warney could be 106 and still bowl out our entire team in less than a days play.
The only way we’ll win the next ashes series is if the Australians don’t show up… Bugger the queen, God save our cricket team.

David Taylor. Toowoomba QLD

To those of you who think the English team isn’t very good, let me tell you from an Austrlian perspective i fear playing them more than any other team. You should be proud of them for the way they kept having a go.
It looks as though Flintoff went out there this morning to win the match by the strokes he was playing. He could have sat there and blocked for a day. Good onya Andy and the boys. Love watching anyone willing to have a go !!! That will win you test matches soon enough..

BTW - I agree with “leigh” - “not wanting of character”. And much of the time - not wanting for talent - just maybe stamina…

One thing that bothers me with the English, is the need to find THE person to blame.

Harmiston in Brisbane then Fletcher in Adelaide.

I watched Harmiston and Hoggard closely in Peth, they toiled under the very hot sun and bowled with grace speed and showed genuin talent.

Flintoff is destined to become one of the games greats.

Cook, Bell, Collingwood and Strauss would be picked in the test team of any country.

I like this England team. I believe tey have underperformed or have been outplayed. But they are worth the price of admission.

Much has been said about the selection and strategic policies - Giles v Panesar, Jones v Read, Mahmood v Anderson, too much influence on the part of Fletcher, too many underdone players, insufficient warm up matches.

The verdict? Monty , obviously. Read, obviously. Anderson? Don’t know - Mahmood suffered because of the apparent lack of faith on the part of his captain. Fletcher got it wrong - despite his now protestations, he is the one who insisted that there must be depth in batting and now says that he underestimated Monty. Anecdotal evidence now indicates that he is effectively sole selector. Underdone players - I think so. Harmy is improving, although I don’t much warm to the speed with which he drops his head when it is not going right. Giles and Anderson have looked underdone. Too few matches? Obviously - why did they return to England after India?

A couple of other things - Freddy is not the goods as captain, IMHO. He is under pressure all the time, not just when he has bat or ball in hand, and I think some of his decision making has been flawed. Yes, he is bowling with pain, but so are Warne and McGrath. It is part of the lot of a professional bowler.

Gilchrist, amongst others, has suggested that Pieterson is batting too low. No doubt about it, whether that is a product of a need for team balance or otherwise. Statistically, he is the most successful of the batsmen, and has been stranded too often. More to the point, he displays a complete inability to bat with the tail. He threw away his wicket in the first innings, at a time when there was a real prospect of overhauling the Aus total, and exposed lesser batsmen at the end of the second. Why take a single off the first ball of an over?

I guess now we can finally, officially come out and say it:
Normal service has been resumed!!!

Ah! That’s better. The Ashes safely back where they know they really belong.

Dad’s Army kicks Pommy butt from here to kingdom come. Oh, joy!!

All that’s left now for the tour to be complete is for Flintoff to hand in his resignation as skipper - preferably in a packed news conference with flash photography lighting up the nightmarish scene. And for Fletcher to have the axe dropped on him from a great height. Where are his smug smiles as Ponting approaches the dressing room this time? hee hee…

Is that enough gloating? I guess so.

Aussie verdict: Eleven guns. And a long two years plus to get all the new blood up and running before the 2009 defense. Perfect timing.
England verdict: KP and Collingwood guns. Honourable mentions to Hoggard, Flintoff and Monty. The rest need to get a bit of consistency and “harden the fuck up”!

Yeah, let’s leave the cricket and talk about Martin Luther. I’ve just received the 55 volumes of Luther’s Works on CD. What a great reformer! Mind you, there wouldn’t be too many poms talking about how so many other life issues are more important than the cricket if you were only 2-1 down. Irim, is that a book or a magazine article? I reckon Luther would have loved cricket if it was around in his day.
Sprycorpse, you seemed to think England had a good chance last time I read your stuff a year ago. What the hell happened? Or were you just feeding the poms false hopes?

Even if we were 2-1 UP, the news of a young wife and mother with a life-threatening illness would have stopped me in my tracks and made me think, “You know, in the big scheme of things…” I’m going to 2 funerals this week, so trust me on that one.

Enjoy Luther’s 55 volume set…Catholic I may be, but I’ve always had a soft spot for him, and share many of his concerns. “As for me, the die is cast; I despise alike the favor and fury of Rome; I do not wish to be reconciled with her; or even to hold any communication with her. Let her condemn and burn my books; I, in turn, unless I can find no fire, will condemn and publicly burn the whole pontifical law, that swamp of heresies.” YOU GO, MARTIN. Agree or disagree, what courage in that day and age, and from within a religious house.

It’s a book - Luther : man between God and the Devil / Heiko A. Oberman, London: Fontana, 1993.

But back to chirping about cricket - well done, Aussies, you played with talent, spirit and chutzpah, so, well-deserved - and enjoy, b/c we’ll want you to fly it back when you next come over ;-)…

‘it’ = ‘the urn’, d’oh! Sorry about lack of pronoun reference.

On one of these threads, someone defended Duncan Fletcher by saying that John Buchanan had made Duncan’s book mandatory reading for the Aussie coaching staff - and asked why he would do that if Buchanan didn’t want the Aussies to imitate Fletcher. It turns out that Fletcher has learned the hard way that ‘loose lips sink ships’:

‘Duncan Fletcher may have contributed towards England’s difficulties with aspects of selection during the first three Ashes Tests, but it seems that the coach may have scored his first own goal as far back as late last year with the publication of his book on the 2005 series…

In among explanations of the team management structure and dissection of the series as it developed, Fletcher spoke in detail about some of his work with the England players, including a fascinating evaluation of Andrew Strauss’s method to combat Shane Warne.

Fletcher also offered thoughts on the techniques and weaknesses of certain Australians including Michael Clarke, a revelation in recent weeks.’

Big f***ing ‘OOPS’.

Read on…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23069-2510967,00.html